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Tuesday, May 21, 2013

I sold my first cupcake in the 6th grade and
loved the feeling of earning money for myself.

It’s funny because as I got older, instead of trying to
build my own business at an early age, I tried to play by the rules of society
and do what I thought my parents expected of me.

I got a regular job, went to college, heck I even wanted to
become an Attorney at some point and work for a big law firm somewhere, but
somehow, on some level all of that felt wrong to me.

For the longest time, I have to admit I felt like a loser in
the corporate world. I knew I was
bright, I tried my best to work well with others, but somehow, I just was not a
fit. I would either wind up getting bored
or feeling restless within a couple of weeks.
If not ,I would find myself wanting to change the system around as soon
as I learned it, I always thought I could teach my boss a thing or two about
how they could make the system more efficient, sound familiar?

I was bored out of my mind if my position did not entail
mutli-tasking or doing something that was not tedious. I often got in trouble
for speaking up “too much”. One time I
even had a boss tell me that he did not pay me to “think” he paid me to do as I was told, that should have clued me in.

As I recall, even as I was working a regular 9-5 I was
always trying different ventures on the side.
I would go to real-Estate Seminars, MLM campaigns, sold jewelry on the
side, set up a catering business with my best friend at the time, you name it ,
I did it, looking back, I was always trying to get my own thing going on the
side.

I felt like a loser most of my adult life when I tried to
work for others and never understood why. Thanks to one of the most successful
copywriters of all time , I finally understood that I was not a failure or a weirdo
when I watched him speak at the Attract Wealth Seminar in Austin Texas some
years back.

Remember those infomercials with the Blu-blocker sunglasses?

Joe Sugarman, a seasoned businessman, BILLIONAIRE , President of the
Blu-blocker Corporation and one of the most successful copywriters in American
history was the one that opened my eyes to the fact that most Entrepreneurs don’t
really easily fit in . We are a special breed of person that has many of the
following characteristics.

*Creative – Thinks outside the box.

*Risk Taker- We often take risks most people are not even
willing to consider.

*Confident – In spite of our flaws, we have an underlying
confidence in ourselves.

*Become easily bored- Restless ;)

*Restless- Never quite satisfied, unquenchable thirst for
growth and knowledge

*Perfectionist- Can tend to be a bit of a perfectionist.

*Generous- Generous on some level ( likes to share , give
back or pay it forward)

* BOSS- I hate to admit this, but we do NOT
like to take orders from others. Clearly most people do not, but for us it’s particularly
painful.

*Resilient- Bounces back like a rubber ball after each failure.
Turns lemons into lemon cookies.

*Optimistic- In spite of a grim outlook, we tend to remain
optimistic.

*Visionary- See opportunity where others do not.

*Unrelenting drive to succeed- You do NOT know the meaning
of the word Failure.

Okay, so by now you get the idea right? Can you relate to
this on any level?

I have a sneaking suspicion that most of you who are reading
this, can in fact relate to most, if not all of the aforementioned characteristics. If not you may be asking yourself, well what’s
the big deal? Why do I need to be like this in order to run a cookie business?
After all, all it takes is a bit of talent as a baker and cookie designer/decorator…
WRONG! I say, and I will tell you why.

You may in fact, have an amazing set of hands and be Sylvia Weinstock
of cookies, and you already have the creativity part down, but if you do not
start to develop some of these characteristics, particularly, optimism,
resilience, and an unrelenting drive to succeed it will be very difficult for
you to navigate the business of cookies, or most any other business.

Some people believe that you are born with these, I believe
that they can be learned !

In order to survive and succeed in this business, at times
you will have to be one tough cookie (pun intended), in order not to throw in
the towel. Running a small business,
particularly while managing a family/household and working a full or other part
time job requires an unwavering drive and focus that not everyone possesses.

This business may be sweet, but it is not for wimps. This may sound harsh but I have learned that
in order succeed in business you need to have the right mindset, otherwise you will
be ready to throw in the towel the first time you burn 200 cookies or one of
your cakes falls apart in transit. I am
here to make sure that does not happen to you (Not the cake and cookies, that,
I’m afraid is inevitable, I mean the quitting part)

Okay, so suppose, you feel this is just not you, or you don’t
want to deal with the business end of this. Hey that’s fine, in that case either
capitalize on your skills and go work for someone who will pay you a generous
salary (That will be a future post about learning to price your cookies
properly) or have your spouse, partner, friend or whomever else run the business
end for you. You can bake, be creative
and leave everything else up to them.

So ladies, in short I will admit it, I am an unapologetic
champion for female entrepreneurs everywhere. We are the champions of society,
we do it all, with love, compassion, dedication, drive and fearlessness so kudos
to you, my fellow Jean D’arc’s of Cookies! I celebrate you for being the few,
fearless females out there, changing the world one cookie at a time.

See you next week when we will start to discuss a bit of the
mechanics of what makes for an amazing cookie business that stands out among
the rest.

Again, if you have any general questions please feel free to
email me at cookiepreneur@gmail.com
or leave your questions in the comment section.

I would love to hear from you, Let me know when you first
discovered that you were a Cookiepreneur?

Always remember, If you can see it, you can be it! Never give up, NEVER!

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

The Journey Begins

Finally, I have been chomping at the bit for over a year now to get
this blog started. Those of you who
already know me , are well aware that I have been excited about this project
for quite a while.

At long last , I am able to dedicate the necessary time and energy
to, hopefully make this a place that you can come to that is filled with
information about a. How you can get your cookie business off the ground or b.
how you can take what you already have to the next level.

Okay so listen up ladies, before we begin, I have to be
honest with you, and I want you to know exactly what you can expect from this
blog. I value your time , and I want you
to get the most out of this. I also want you to know a bit about me as a person
. I don’t know about you, but I like to
know who I am listening to and why I should listen. I don’t take anything for
granted.

My intention as I stated before is to share a wealth of
information with you about how to grow your business. Now that means different things to different people. In other words, some of you may think the information I will provide is all about the mechanics of how to start a small business from home, but that's not what this blog is all about. Sure, there will be some of that but let me tell you exactlly how I intend to help you grow or start your business.

Before we begin this journey together, I want you to know a
little about my story. I will not bore
you with the long protracted version of woe is me, because it’s not, but I can
tell you this.

My Dark Night

Before I started baking and decorating cookies for a living,
which quite frankly, I would have never imagined,doing a few years
ago, I went through what many call MY personal Dark Night of the Soul.

I am going to throw around some figures here, not to brag
about what I had, but so that you can fully comprehend the magnitude of what I
went through, and how far I fell.

Within the a period of a single year I found myself in a
position where I was forced to sell my interests in a very lucrative Mortgage Business
that I co-founded . My five figure monthly income vanished, overnight. My husband of 8 years left me
for another woman. I was left with a
three year old child, a $4500 dollar per month mortgage payment, a $1100 per
month car payment, three properties and two elderly parents. One an ailing
mother ( Alzheimer’s) that died soon thereafter and the string of unfortunate
events continued for two years, until they finally culminated in me losing everything
except my son and my sanity. It was a period of three years that I do not wish
on even the most evil person on earth.

The Decision

As I look back on as the greatest
period of Creative Destruction I have sustained, there was an immense amount of
growth for me both spiritual and as an Entrepreneur. I am the kind of person who has never
accepted defeat and therefore I decided that if this was happening to me, I was
going to give it a purpose, and use it to serve me, and others In the future.

It's not what life throws at you, it's how you handle it that counts and determines your destiny.

The Comeback

From an early age, 16 or so, I have been fascinated by the subjects of Psychology and Personal Development. I always
loved people like Tony Robbins, Dr. Wayne Dyer and Louise L. Hay. I read their books, and studied them. I wondered how
these people had turned their lives around so dramatically after such devastating failures, setbacks and horrible circumstances

Over the years I had taken many Psychology courses both in college and invested thousands upon thousands of dollars in books, seminars and have an extensive education in Personal Development, Entrepreneurship, Influence NLP and like subjects in addition to attending Business School for a year where I completed coursework in Leadership Theory, Economics, International Business, Marketing and other subjects relevant to Entrepreneurship .

It had been a few years since I had not done any heavy work on the Personal Development related subjects, and somehow when I took an
inventory of everything that happened to me, I decided that it was time for me
to dive back in and search within , to uncover what was going on inside of me, rather than continue to look outside for those answers.

I have read about countless successful entrepreneurs that have been financially devastated only to rise from the ashes once again. I wanted to learn for myself, how I could apply all of these theories so that I could handle all of this without losing my
mind, and not just survive it, but learn from it , grow
stronger and share what I have learned with others.

As you all now know, I did make it through that period of
time in my life, and reinvented myself as a Baker/Cookie decorator. I am not yet a mogul by societal standards, but I can now support my household on my own if need be.

I can tell you that
my first year I invested about $800. That’s all I had to start with , no more.

My second year I think I made about $250, the third I made
about $12,000, the fourth $74,000 and projections are for over 100K for year number 5 in spite of a recent setback.

That kind of money is certainly not a fortune to some, but for someone
who is looking to build a business produces extra income without having to
leave their home too much ( Except when you have to rent out a commercial
kitchen for large orders) that’s not too bad, in fact it’s about 30-40K more money
than most middle class Americans bring home if not more.

It's enough , if using it as a second household income to send your kid to private school, or pay for your child's college tuition ( At least part of it depending on where they go) .

I am here to teach you how to become independent and build real businesses. I am an open book and if you are going to listen to what I have to
say, then you should know that you are hearing someone who knows what they are
talking about, and someone who is going to be able to teach you to do the same
thing
and hopefully exceed those numbers.

There are far too many phonies out there lying about how they made 50K their first year working from home, honestly, I have never seen that happen in this business and it takes hard , constant and steady work to build a cookie business, Any business for that matter, anything else is a lie or a blatant exaggeration, plain and simple .

I have been to what I consider the depths of hell and back and learned that there is no growth without resistance. As many of you already know , being a Cookiepreneur
is filled with resistance on many fronts that we will get into at a later time.

Focus of this Blog

In short what My blog will focus on is sharing much of what I have learned both through my studies and my personal experiences, my triumphs and failures and what I consider
to be the two main components of successful entrepreneurship.

Component I (MECHANICS)- The Outer game

This is the component of success that most
people are familiar with are the technical in’s and out’s of running a business
such as having : A good business plan, a solid costing model in place, great products
that stand out among your peers, great marketing strategies, great networking,
understanding basic business principles such as ROI ( Return on investment) and the like, I'm sure you
get the point.

Component II ( MINDSET) -The Inner game

This is the remaining 80% of , which is
actually the most important part in both your life as an entrepreneur and your
life in general . The inner game is your psychology or mindset and that is what
is going to determine the following: How you handle failure and how quickly you
can bounce back, how you deal with
difficult clients, how you determine the value of your work, and not feel guilty about charging what it's truly worth, how you feel about
yourself as a business person , how you react to people who do not appreciate
your work , how you treat your peers and others, whether you are confident in
your work or always trying to hide, whether or not you feel deserving of your
success. All these things, if not fine tuned are ultimately are going to bleed
into the mechanics of your business and affect your overall ability to earn
money through doing what you love.

Think of mindset as the soil in which you grow a plant, if it is not fertilized properly, a plant will not grow or reach its full potential. Mechanics is the actual plant.

We will absolutely be discussing some of the MECHANICAL
aspects of the Cookie Business, we will mostly
discuss the MINDSET aspects that will prepare you to build a cookie empire if
that is what you wish to do, which brings me to the last point of disclosure
that I wish to make.

I admit it !

I like baking cookies, I love decorating them. For me, it’s like therapy and I love the fact
that I can play with flour and sugar and have something so beautiful that families
share on special occasions. Creating a cookie business has allowed me to discover a
talent I never knew I had, to cultivate it and to grow from it. It helped me get back on my feet financially
after a complete holocaust and I continue to run my cookie business and am
happy to do it however, life is about growth and I feel myself evolving into a
new role.

I must make this confession
to you. My true passion, what keeps me
up at night ( in a good way) , what makes me light up like a Christmas tree, is
sharing what I have learned with you. So you see, this is a dream for me, and I greatly look
forward to serving you in any way that I can.
I look forward to hearing from you.
I will post weekly in the beginning stages and and as Cookiepreneur evolves and grows, we will have
more discussions and I plan to hold conference calls, post videos, and even
have live, in person conferences where we can all meet up.

Thank you ladies (And any gentlemen as well) for all of the
inspiration you have given me to start these conversations . I will close with my personal philosophy of life.

Persistence is the greatest Key to Success! If you can see it, you can be it! Never, give up ! Never!

Aymee

p.s If you have any general questions or think of a subject you would like me to touch on, please feel free to email me at Cookiepreneur@gmail.com

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About Me

I believe that Small business owners , women in particular are the unsung champions of society. Very often without fancy degrees or formal education, they innovate, create and bring to life products and services that provide solutions and elevate the quality of life for society in general.

Female Entrepreneurs are a rising economic power in this country and in the world.

My life's purpose is focused on helping these women uncover their inner gifts and harnessing the inner resources that will help them pave the way to success one step at a time.

While my work does focus on the particulars of Cookiepreneurship, or the particulars of the Cottage Food Industry, most of what I teach and write about applies to all business women.

The main focus of my business is to help women cultivate the necessary mindset to successfully navigate all of the challenges that owning a small business can present, by giving them the tools and the mechanisms to create success.

I bring my own experiences as a successful entrepreneur as well as my years of study in the fields of Personal Development, Psychology and Business in order to mentor, coach , and serve as a consultant to women who are seeking to establish a solid business, often starting from home.